Important News on our Adoption... Please Read

Ok, we wanted to start out the new year with new news & be very open about our adoption plans. Some people know but many do not. Please read through this entire post before making any judgments & don't stop half way through. This is very important for all who are involved in our lives! I have mentioned in previous posts that we decided to adopt a child with special needs. Well, what does that mean. In China most special needs are physical deformities with many children missing limbs, cleft pallet, etc. In Africa that is not the case. What is the big problem in Africa? HIV & AIDS. YES, we are adopting a child with HIV! Like I said, please keep reading!

When I first started reading about others who had adopted a child with HIV I thought “That's awesome for them to do such a great thing but I could never do that.” It was still such a scarey thing for me. I knew that you couldn't just catch HIV by being by someone but I didn't really understand much about it. Much of the information that people have about HIV is from the 80's.

What you need to know:

• HIV is considered a chronic but manageable disease with proper treatment.
• Children who receive treatment are expected to live a normal lifespan.
• HIV has never been transmitted in normal family living conditions.
• You NEVER have to fear contracting HIV through casual contact with an HIV+ person.
• HIV is spread in three main ways: sexual contact, IV drug use through the sharing of dirty needles, mother to infant (pregnancy, birth or breast feeding.)
• All around the world orphans are overlooked for adoption because of their HIV+ status
• Medications called ARVs can mean the difference between life and death.
• The combination of three or more ARVs is called HAART. (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy)
• With medication, HIV can be effectively managed to the point that the virus is undetectable in laboratory tests.
• There is a term for the miraculous transformation HIV+ people undergo when they begin receiving the medications they need
  The Lazarus Effect is a term commonly used to describe people who were once on the brink of
  death who have been restored again to health through medication.

Yet still, why would we CHOOSE to care for such a serious illness? Regardless whether we adopt them or not, they already have HIV. If they remain an orphan in Ethiopia, they could die of the illness without medication. We started this adoption process to bring a child into our family that needed us. There are so many people on the waiting lists for a “healthy” child. There is nothing at all wrong with adopting a healthy child but that is not what we felt God was calling us to do. Just to sit & wait forever for this perfect healthy child (which there is still no guarantee they won't have any issues when they come home). There are so many children being passed over just because of those 3 letters HIV. It is so sad. From what I've heard from other people who have adopted HIV children, their children were made to feel “less than” or told they are “yucky”. I want our child(ren) to know that they ARE loved & they are not “yucky”. That is why we have chosen to not keep their HIV status private. We don't want them to feel like there is something wrong with them & that they have to keep it secret. They will take 3 medications twice a day for the rest of their lives & will visit the doctor every 3 months but other than that, their daily life will be just like any other person. Yes they may have to have some tough conversations when they get in to a serious relationship but as I mentioned, they already had HIV so this would have already happened regardless of whether or not we adopted them.

This was already on the blog but thought it was appropriate again.

"...once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act."

~ Proverbs 24:12

I will continue to post information on here. I don't expect this to sink in right away. It took us a while ourselves to make this big decision. I just ask you to be open to this information. Please feel free to ask us any questions & if we don't know, we will find out & let you know. Also there is very good information that can be found at www.projecthopeful.org/

As always, thank you for your love & support!  To receive updates via email on our new blog posts, please enter your email on the right of this page.